What does it mean to be an ecological citizen in the global south? While citizens in the global north are urged to go ‘green’ and reduce their ecological footprint, how are those in the global south struggling to save their homes, livelihoods and rights to the commons enacting new forms of ecological citizenship? How are they linking sustainability, development and environment to challenge dominant socio-economic relations of production? Ecological Citizenship in the Global South will make a timely and original intervention in debates around contemporary struggles for political-ecological rights, justice and democracy across the global south. Challenging the overwhelming tone of current debates that tend to valorise those involved in these struggles as victims of neoliberal development or demonize their activism as illegal and anti-developmental, this book acknowledges what has come to be regarded widely as a ‘problem’ of grassroots democracy in the global south – its widespread construction of marginalized communities as disempowered and therefore a ‘burden on the state’. Providing a reconceptualization of ‘ecological citizenship’ in the global south, this book asks how those involved in grassroots struggles are re-imagining rights and responsibilities towards a local and global commons by rethinking the divides between state and citizen, public and private, rural and urban.

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Reblogged this on Rural-Urban Frontiers and commented:
Excited to have received a book contract from Zed Books. The book is titled: “Ecological Citizenship in the Global South: Re imagining rights, justice and democracy”. Editors: Ayona Datta and Rohit Madan. Here is a short synopsis, more details to follow. We hope to have the book in print by summer next year.